


Triggers

by SharaMichaels



Category: Love Never Dies - Lloyd Webber, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 05:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7923097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharaMichaels/pseuds/SharaMichaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate ending to Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies. It takes a gun shot to make Christine Daaé question where her home is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triggers

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is rather a short piece and you can probably guess from the "Relationships" field what does the alternate ending refer too. I feel like a lot of explanations might spoil it, but I can't help but comment: if you're an erik/christine shipper, better skip this one than be angry with me afterwards.  
> 2\. I apologize for any inaccuracies in the setting of the scenes. With this one-shot, I focused more on the emotions and less on the world building, so some of the locations I tried to describe the way they appear in the Australian DVD, without thinking too much about how they'd look like in reality.  
> 3\. Enjoy and try to leave some kudos if you liked it (I would totally not mind if you didn't though).

 

 

 

 

There are too many people on the pier. The masked man tries to talk some sense into the poor rattled ballerina turned show-girl. She’s holding onto the boy and won’t let go of him, with a lost expression plastered on her face. The boy whimpers and locks eyes with Christine; he’s an unfortunate prisoner, captive in a situation he should have never been part of. The mother watches in horror as her daughter slowly loses the last strips of sanity she had left.

The boy is free at last. He runs towards Christine and she clutches him at her heart for a long second, before posting herself in front of him, using her body to shield him from impending danger: the show-girl has pulled out a gun.

The masked man almost does it. His fingers are on the gun, gently clasping the now trembling hand of the show-girl. She’s looking into his eyes, enthralled by his soothing words.

“Beauty sometimes goes unseen…”

Christine sighs: one more gesture and they’ll very likely be free. The mother gasps: one more gesture and she’ll be able to run reassuring hands on her poor daughter’s back. The boy seems to have been given a head start: divine intervention or maybe just a well-timed accident; he looks up at his mother, his gaze completely focused on her face.

“… we can’t all be like Christine.”

The verbal trigger that made her push the physical one. The show-girl’s hand curls around the hard metal of the gun and yanks it away from the masked man.

“Christine? Always Christine!”

She’s outraged, heartbroken, betrayed. Her dreams shatter in front of this bitter reality, one that she has always foreseen, but adamantly refused to believe. Tears stream down the contorted features as she pushes the gun deep in her mouth and shoots.

Blood spills everywhere and everybody pretends they don’t see the brain remains flowing from the shattered skull. The inert body falls with a thump; the gun rolls out of her finally still hand and drops in the ocean.

The mother’s scream is horrific, something one could hardly believe came from a human throat. The masked man growls and starts with his hands forward, but it’s too late. The show-girl’s life slips right out of his grasp.

Christine gasps. No air seems to come out anymore, like she has forgotten how to breathe. She can hardly control her trembling hands, but her maternal instinct kicks in in time and makes her limbs convulse around the boy, who had yet to see the ordeal. She presses him into her skirt with a violent move, a desperate gesture to conceal his too young mind from the horrible image.

The mother glances at her dead daughter. The show-girl’s eyes are still open and their lost gaze bears a striking resemblance to how she looked like while still alive. The mother chooses to ignore the corpse for the time being. In a split of a second, she seems to lose all her sanity at once and launches in a vicious attack towards the masked man. Her mouth spits abuse at him, words nobody imagined could reside in such a cool, composed mind, while the hands tug at his clothes, at his face, at his mask. She wants to pull him apart, to rip him to pieces and throw him in the ocean bit by bit.

The mask falls on the ground and follows the same trail the gun took mere moments ago. With her hands planted on the sides of his face, nails digging deep into his rotten flesh, the mother shakes what used to once be her protégé.

“You killed her! _You monster_ , you killed her! You killed my little girl…”

The words drown in desperate sobs. Her eyes are shut tight, turning into waterfalls, and the deafening sound of her horrific cry fills the air. She continues to shake the masked man and is herself succumbed to a tremor that makes her shoulders heave.

Christine hears the muffled whisper of her son.

“Is she dead?” he asks and Christine fights hard the wobbling of her knees. Her hand searches the one of her son, fastens on it with an iron grip and they start running.

○○○

Christine’s steps take her outside the theater. The air is chilly and her bare arms revolt; fine hairs, invisible in the light of day, are now spiking up. With her mouth wide open she breaths harshly, in an attempt to cleanse herself from the so very fresh horrors. Gustave has yet to process what has just happened and asks one more time, with a clear voice that sounds surprisingly calm:

“Is she dead, mama?”

Christine can barely hold back her tears. She mutters a “yes” but chokes up, so she hardens the affirmation with a vigorous nod. She feels Gustave hugging her and her protective hands wrap around the boy’s head, stroking the hair gently. She remains straight as a pole, looking at the American streets, at the American people, at the American buildings. Smiles. Cheerful greetings. Stolen kisses. “Taxi! Wait up!”. “Is the store still open?” Life exudes from the streets and surrounds her, an ocean in the middle of which she chooses to remain impassable, like an island of mourning.

How extraordinary it is to see a nightmare and the most pleasant aspects of reality separated by only a few walls! What a crude world this one, which has the audacity to be so lively when death happened merely minutes ago, when death might still be happening at the end of that damned pier!

She suddenly feels completely alone, aside from the boy she’s hanging onto. All the faces parading in front of her feel foreign and menacing. She closes her eyes for a second and sees the people greeting her at Phantasma, the old friends and the old lover… who found his way in her heart again.

Strangers. All strangers. All being broken by things that she had no knowledge of, all battling hardships so very alien to her. They hardly knew her way back when and could not possibly know her better now.

Her peacock dress is heavy and wears her down. She feels ridiculous standing there, wearing what it’s very obviously a show outfit. And what a show, what a pathetic display of power, what a humiliating position for the soprano of the century! Although she has barely any money left and no intention of going back to her dressing room, Christine is seriously considering making the run back to France, and the thought is disturbingly similar to the hopeless escape plan of a death row inmate.

Someone is moving next to her; she can hear the ruffling of the coat and steps getting closer. With her eyes squeezed shut, Christine is praying: “Go away, go away, go away…”

Gustave makes a move in her embrace. His voice melts into the one of the intruder, who’s now standing beside them:

“Papa!” 

“Christine?” 

She opens her eyes and looks at him dumbfounded. Her face is red, damp, swollen. She thinks he has left her for good. Tearful eyes express confusion.

“Christine, what has happened? You’ve been crying! Who made you cry?”

He sounds truly concerned. Christine is speechless, gaping at the one who is, at least legally, still her husband.

Gustave forces himself out of his mother’s grip and takes a step forward. Raoul goes down on one knee and levels his eyes with the boy.

“She’s dead, papa.”

Raoul looks up at Christine, who’s frantically wiping the tears off her cheeks. She manages to still her voice in her throat and finds a few words to share with him: 

“Meg. Meg is dead.” A slight glance at the boy, who, although hasn’t seen the gesture, is very likely smart enough to figure it all out. “Meg _killed herself_ , Raoul.”

She barely hears his gasp. Her mind is focused on something else. His name feels _warm_ in her mouth. She takes a good look at him and his face exudes light. It’s as if the whole world were in gray and he alone was in colours.

Raoul stands up and his eyes look green in the precarious light of the street lamp. He tries a comforting gesture but stops midway. Christine’s gaze follows his hand and he blushes when his cowardice is discovered. Gustave takes his father’s hand and it makes both him and Christine flinch.

“Papa… when are we going home?”

Christine’s hands curl around her throat; she wants to scream.

Raoul finds the power to smile. A gesture of encouragement: he’s patiently waiting for her words; he’s not fighting anymore and will be pleased with whatever position she’s ready to grant him. His smile is a beacon in the storm inside her soul; it has been a while since she’s last seen him smile like that and yet it feels more familiar, more _homely_ than anything she’s experienced the past few days.

“Raoul…” she feels a strange relief in being able to utter the calling. “Please take us away from here.”

He nods and finds a drop of courage to finish a gesture he’s started a while ago. He squeezes Christine’s shoulder with his free hand, then glances down at the boy, who’s hanging onto his arm. It’s Christine’s turn to nod and he scoops the boy up with a determined movement. Christine then turns to the guard, who seemed to have been witnessed everything from his spot:

“If Mister Y comes looking for Christine Daaé, please tell him that she is gone. She is gone and it is futile to go looking for her anymore.”

Raoul is waiting patiently and offers her his arm, as gallantly as he can while carrying a child. Christine takes it and he leans his temple over hers.

“I have a carriage waiting. There is still time to catch the ship. That is, unless you don’t change your mind.”

Christine’s eyes find his and she manages a reply, a single word spoken with an incredible force: 

“Never.” 

○○○

Midnight finds the de Chagnys nestled into each other on a chaise-longue, on the deck of the Atlantic Queen. It took a while to get Gustave to fall asleep and, when it was finally done, Christine gave in to her own nightmares and succumbed herself to a panic attack. In an attempt to calm her down, Raoul proposed a walk on the deck, in the protective moonlight and the refreshing wind. Christine obliged and they eventually settle on a chaise-longue, she with her head in the curve of his shoulder, he with an arm secured around her waist.

They’re both cuddled underneath a blanket Raoul took from his cabin; he gathers all the knowledge he has left from previous sailing experiences to point at constellations and tell her stories about what they mean. He tries to speak in the most cheerful and amusing of manners and when he doesn’t quite recognize one group stars or doesn’t quite remember its name, he invents.

The game continues for a while, but the pressure of the future keeps building up inside Raoul’s chest. He knows it’s not a good time for serious conversations and would love to spare Christine of more pain, but he feels like certain truths needs to be spoken. The ship takes them closer to France every second and he believes that if, once reached the shore, they wanted to go on the same path, then all the cards need to be on the table. He speaks fearfully at first, but his tone grows steadier with every word:

“Christine… I have to tell you something. I- I _know_. About Gustave, about you and Mister Y… I know.” 

She jolts out of place and holds herself over him. 

“What? How do you mean? How did you find out?”

“ _He_ told me. Mr. Y, that is. He came to me when I was alone in that bar. We had an altercation… and he told me.” 

The other truths can wait until a later time. Christine looks at him fearfully and when she speaks, her voice trembles:

“I don’t suppose you could ever forgive me for this, could you?”

The expression in her eyes is breaking his heart. He dares to caress her cheek, scared at first she might shy away from his touch. She bows her gaze, looking ashamed; he lifts her chin with his fingers and throws her a serious glance.

“Nonsense, Christine. I am here with you, aren’t I? I won’t deny that I _wanted_ to be outraged, I _wanted_ to hate you. Oh, how much I wish I could have hated you! It would have made leaving so much easier. But as much as my mind tells me I should despise you, my heart has already forgiven you. _I love you_. Even when by society standards you would be despicable, I still love you; you should have known that by now. And I love the boy too, if you were by any chance concerned about that…”

She falls back on his chest with a sigh. Raoul continues with his tone just as steady:  

“And even if you’ll tell me you have five more illegitimate children, I’ll still stay with you… and we’d take them all in.”

Christine buries her face in his shirt and childishly covers her quivering lips with her hands. Raoul hears her sobbing and puts both his arms together, to form a proper embrace around her.

“What hurts the most is that you couldn’t tell me… Why, Christine? I wish you told me… ” then, suddenly frightened by the possible answers, he adds silently: “Christine, what were you afraid of?”

 _Of him_. She was afraid of him. However, after so many years, she’s uncertain what exactly she feared he might have to done to her. At the late hour, after all the horrors of the day, Christine cannot think anymore. She feels an immense shame closing over her. Her cheeks are burning and a sudden guilt threatens to suffocate her; she’s shaking in her husband’s arms. Raoul tightens his grip and murmurs a “shh” against her hair, which eventually melts into a long, gentle kiss.

“Shh… It’s all right, Christine. You don’t have to cry, I’m not mad… We’re going home now, everything will be all right.” 

The words have a bigger impact on her than one might expect from a simple reassuring phrase. She wipes away her tears and tilts her head back, such that she can look at his face when she speaks: 

“Oh, Raoul, if only you knew how much I want to go home… How much I wanted to go home all these past years… Where is home now? Can you tell me that? I haven’t felt at home in our- in _your_ mansion for so long, and for a moment I thought _he_ , his Phantasma, could actually be my new home. What a short lived hope that one was… I’m so tired and I don’t know what home is supposed to feel like anymore…” 

It’s Raoul’s turn to sigh, but he finds strength to sustain her gaze and speak with joviality: 

“Then let’s build you a new home, Christine Daaé.” 

He finally sees her smile and it fills his heart with joy. She stretches to brush a tentative kiss on his jaw, then settles back in the curve of his shoulder and closes her hand over his heart. 

“I’m sorry, monsieur, but you seem to be in error. My name is Madame de Chagny.” 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
